As transit woes keep rising, so will fares

A woman holds up a sign calling out Gov. Andrew Cuomo outside his Midtown office.

As fed-up straphangers approach their breaking point, cash-strapped transit officials have plans sure to send some riders over the edge.

The beleaguered Metropolitan Transportation Authority will hike fares in 2019 and 2021, continuing a 4% biennial fare and toll hike policy first implemented in 2009, officials said Wednesday.

“Deficit will increase without fare increases,” said the MTA's chief financial officer, Robert Foran, who at the agency’s monthly meeting highlighted a need for increased revenue to keep pace with rising interest rates, maintenance costs and other factors.

But board members pushed against the idea that commuters should pick up the tab, urging Chairman Joseph Lhota to devise alternative ways to raise cash.

“If you take these to their logical conclusion, at some point the fare will be $10 and tolls will be $50,” said MTA board member Andrew Albert. “I’m not sure that’s sustainable.”

According to the transportation authority, fares and tolls cover half of its operating costs and about a third of total expenses. But board members who are appointed by various elected officials in the MTA's 12-county service area, are trying to distance themselves from fee increases in light of recent bad publicity.

“I think it is time now for us and our partners at the state to review or re-evaluate the every-other-year fare and toll discussion,” said another member, Mitchell Pally.

This year’s fare hike in March raised the cost of weekly unlimited MetroCards by $1, to $32, and brought monthly passes to $121 from $116.50, though single rides stayed $2.75 per swipe.

“I don’t think our customers can accept it anymore,” Pally added.

While board members unanimously agreed it is unfair to burden commuters with the transit agency’s money problems, their leverage in halting the hike policy rests on the whims of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose appointees cast six of the board's 14 votes, effectively giving him control of the MTA.

“The board has had its oversight role and its independent authority basically stripped away,” complained one member, Andrew Saul, a Westchester County representative put on the board by County Executive Rob Astorino, a past and possible future election opponent of Cuomo.

“We have a governor who insists on micromanaging the MTA,” Saul declared. “The result is what you see now.”

Saul’s backlash comes amid increased criticism of Cuomo for the ailing transportation system and his failure to accept responsibility for it.

MTA Chairman Joseph Lhota, a Cuomo appointee, issued a rescue plan for the subways Tuesday, but he and Cuomo want to split the $836 million bill evenly with Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Though the mayor has refused the request, Lhota did not back down at the meeting. The chairman said he would not negotiate with de Blasio in public, however.

While officials spar over responsibility, disgruntled commuters and their representatives say they just want action.

City Councilman Ydanis Rodríguez, D-Manhattan, applauded Lhota's emergency plan but advocated for trying other solutions, including Move New York's Fair Plan, which would toll all vehicles on entering Manhattan's business district and lower tolls elsewhere. More than $1 billion of the annual toll revenue would go to the MTA.

“There are ideas out there that will work," Rodriguez said. "I think that given the crisis of this moment, we should not fail to capitalize on them."

"Do you ride the subway?" one straphanger, Lee Rogers, asked of Cuomo and de Blasio, who were not present, in a fiery speech in which she blasted their "photo-ops" and implored them to take the train for a month and report back to regular riders with a solution.

"Put your personal testimonies up here,” Rogers said.

"The errant trash bag, the garbled announcements, the scurrying rats—they all define our shabby system," said Adrian Untermyer of the Riders Alliance, an advocacy group for subway users. "They do not cause the meltdowns, but they symbolize the political indifference to a system in desperate need of resources and attention to detail."

The board meeting turned into a free-for-all for Cuomo critics. The number of registered speakers was more than double last month’s figure and took two hours to vociferate their anger over lack of leadership and misplaced expenditure.

“When Andrew Cuomo tries to pretend he’s not in charge of this organization, it is a bald-faced lie,” said William Raudenbush, a candidate running to represent District 6 in the City Council. “It’s easy to beat up on the governor, but I want be the first one to congratulate him when he funds the modernization of signals, when he prepares our subway system for the future and does the patient task of not doing fancy projects that give him the limelight but does the long-term governing of thinking 15, 20, 30 years into the future."

“Maybe the excess of $4 billion a year New York City residents pay [in state taxes] that they don’t see back is on a bridge in Buffalo somewhere,” Raudenbush added, taking a jab at Cuomo’s robust support for upstate economic development.

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